Crime and police report information is rapidly migrating from paper records to automated
records management databases. Most mid and large sized police agencies have such systems that
provide access to information by their own personnel, but lack any efficient manner by which to
provide that information to other agencies. Criminals show no regard for jurisdictional
boundaries and in fact take advantage of the lack of communication across jurisdictions. Federal
standards initiatives such as the National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS, US
Department of Justice 1998), are attempting to provide reporting standards to police agencies to
facilitate future reporting and information sharing among agencies as these electronic reporting
systems become more widespread. We integrated platform-independence, stability, scalability, and an intuitive graphical user interface to develop the COPLINK system, which is currently being deployed at Tucson
Police Department (TPD). User evaluations of the application allowed us to study the impact of
COPLINK on law enforcement personnel as well as to identify requirements for improving the
system and extending the project. We are currently in the process of extending the functionality
of COPLINK in several areas. These include textual analysis, collaboration, visualization and
geo-mapping.

Crime and police report information is rapidly migrating from paper records to automated
records management databases. Most mid and large sized police agencies have such systems that
provide access to information by their own personnel, but lack any efficient manner by which to
provide that information to other agencies. Criminals show no regard for jurisdictional
boundaries and in fact take advantage of the lack of communication across jurisdictions. Federal
standards initiatives such as the National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS, US
Department of Justice 1998), are attempting to provide reporting standards to police agencies to
facilitate future reporting and information sharing among agencies as these electronic reporting
systems become more widespread. We integrated platform-independence, stability, scalability, and an intuitive graphical user interface to develop the COPLINK system, which is currently being deployed at Tucson
Police Department (TPD). User evaluations of the application allowed us to study the impact of
COPLINK on law enforcement personnel as well as to identify requirements for improving the
system and extending the project. We are currently in the process of extending the functionality
of COPLINK in several areas. These include textual analysis, collaboration, visualization and
geo-mapping.